In which our heroine experiences a marital difficulty.
When I was little, my father used to take my sisters and I to the neighbourhood shrine.
It was a sprawling old building – the type that should’ve been an attraction for all of us and all the kids we played with. So many hiding places! So many spots with strange sorts of echoes to take turns shouting in! So many golden doodads of great religious significance to get our grubby fingerprints all over! But we’d have to be dragged there, to a body, and would tear out as soon as the service was done.
~
Have you ever had this feeling? A loved one dies. You’ve gone to their wake, paid your respects. Then you go to where they lived to help sort it out and you see all of their things, exactly how they left it. Like they’ve just popped out for a bit because they forgot to get the milk for tea. It never fools you. And that’s what the shrine was like.
All of us children felt it and that’s why we stayed away, refusing to show either the proper respect or proper disrespect for the gods. Our parents despaired, but we noticed they didn’t try punishing us that hard. Like they felt it too, but didn’t want to acknowledge it.
I mention this because it’s the exact feeling I got when Toynbee opened up the trapdoor and led us down the ladder.
~
She didn’t protest my request for information. She didn’t even speak – just took several deep and shuddering breaths before pushing herself to her feet, swaying in a non-existent breeze. But she did look at me like I’d struck her, flinching when I raised my hand to brush a stray hair from my cheek.
“Please,” said Toynbee after many long moments. “Please, please don’t make me go down there.”
“We see you’re uncomfortable with the notion, but it’s either that or you can stay up here with Constable Calvin while I have a look myself,” said Horace. My shouting muscles warmed up abruptly. Yes, detective friend. Let’s make sure that the member of our pair with a point of comparison for what’s down that trapdoor stays up in the sunlight!
But Toynbee spared his ears. “You can’t go down alone,” she said with a flatness that startled me. From her workbench, she picked up a weird device – like a lamp on a stick and held the same way as a torch. Then she kneeled by the trapdoor’s hinge and, with gentle fingers, turned what I had assumed was just a knob by increments, right, left, right. Hearing a click, she grabbed the knob with her entire hand and hauled it and the trapdoor upwards.
She pressed a button on the device, causing the glass portion of it to illuminate, and began her descent with a weird, mechanical motion.
“Shall I follow first, or shall you?” asked Horace with nonplused eyes. I sighed and followed Toynbee.
The ladder, of course, was just the same as in the chamber – flawlessly welded iron.
The walls of the tunnel were just the same as the chamber’s, all white-grey stone, perfectly cut and fit together like the richest of Spiran nobles into their coats.
The smell was just the same, the source-less blue light was just the same, the amber light from Toynbee’s torch gadget notwithstanding. She stood close to the ladder, clutching the gadget like a security blanket.
The walls were built of the same sort of grey stone as that room underneath Lark and Hammersmith and had the same sort of non-smell.
The metal doors were nearly the same. Oh, they looked exactly similar to the ones in the chamber, except for one crucial difference: there was a lot more of them than four. They lined the tunnel past where I could see. I counted twelve. Of course, being who I was, I tried the knobs of the first four and might’ve saved myself the energy for all the good it did me. That act created the closest thing resembling a smile I ever saw coming from Toynbee, but it should be noted that this isn’t saying much.
With a thump, Horace landed on the floor behind me. “I guess you must believe me now, don’t you,” I told him without turning around.
Came the dry response, “Did I ever actually say that I doubted you?”
“No, but you weren’t respectful enough of my observations. So Toynbee, you said these lead to the brothel...?”
“Yes,” said Toynbee. “Everywhere.”
“Define ‘everywhere,’” said Horace.
And here Toynbee began to walk, looping her arm around mine as she passed me, pointing her torch straight ahead. I went along with her without resistance, compelled more by curiousity than by a desire to comfort her. “Places here, places elsewhere. Places that used to be.” She shook her head violently. “And ‘things.’”
We passed the twelfth door – I could hear Horace striding with us, close enough to interfere if something happened to the two of us, close enough to run away if he had to – and straight ahead was a room. Here Toynbee stopped us. Another passage lay on the opposite end, but to my right and left were more locked doors. And there was a ladder, rising up the heavens or who knows what. Another apartment or house? A business? (Not the brothel; we didn’t walk nearly far enough for that.) I’d have to find out. My hand lifted, itching to grab onto the rungs.
But then it hit me. The ‘feeling’ – the one I had in the shrine, so long ago. The unfamiliar familiarity of it made me sick and my hand dropped down. Onto my sword hilt, as it turned out, and I only realised when Toynbee jerked away from me like I had the pox.
And I could hear, like a tremor in my bones, a rasping. Just on the edge of human hearing. It was enough to make me lose my nerve and I ran. Gods help me, I was to first to run.
~
Later, after we were all back in the sitting room, Toynbee looked me in the eyes and made a slashing motion across her heart. I thought then that Horace must have seen it, but nowadays, I’m not so sure.
~
Still later, but not by much, us two were left alone in the room while our witness went to the lavatory. Rivers may rise, civilisations may crumble, but the people still have to relieve themselves. The good detective and I didn’t spend the time idly.
“What do we do?” he asked.
“Do you think she’s the murderer?” I asked.
Horace was swift and decisive in his answer. “No. I think she’s unwell. I think she can tell us what happened to Madam Clyde. But while theoretically, she could muster up the strength to land the blows that killed her... Look at her. Look at her arms. Do you think it’s all that likely?” I wasn’t all that certain and I told him so. You never know what someone’s capable of doing when they’re sufficiently enraged, impassioned, etc.
And I told him so. “And we can’t very well leave her here. Best case scenario, she’d hurt her own self! By accident!”
“And what do we do with her? Throw her in the jail with the smugglers, thieves, vandals, and confirmed killers? Jane, you’re smarter than that.”
Leaving her alone in that place had to be the worst idea ever conceived of, I thought. Right conclusion, wrong reasons. I had a talent for such things, in those bygone days. But at least I had the good sense to be grateful for him not bringing up my flight. If not the good sense to thank him for it.
But he was the detective, I was the constable. I may have counted him as a sort of friend, but I could only argue with him so far. Worse yet, I couldn’t come up with any alternatives. So he waited for Toynbee to re-emerge, finished his questioning, gave her his information and told her to ask for him should she remember or need anything else.
And then we left. I think I smelled something acidic when we were still in the yard, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me.
~
The watch house was in a tizzy and the captain was in her cups when we returned. Flask, rather.
Captain Charla Loper, famed in story and song. I’ll try not to let her future actions sour my depiction of her too much, but I think this was my impression of her at the time: she was a charming soul, fun to drink with, wonderful boss and utterly unsuited for her job. Everyone knew that in her youth, she set out to be a lawyer like her wealthy parents wanted – she fell into the captaincy position because militia work was the Thing To Do with that set, but no one else wanted the top spot. And when Lark ordered us here, so she came too.
“That bastard Harkley’s in town,” she said. Before I could feign astonishment, she added, “Spoke at a union meeting, gave us the slip after we got word. Oh, and your husband’s been arrested.”
Horace prodded me in the back with his finger, reminding me to stop hanging my mouth open like an idiot. “What for?” I asked. Demanded. Squeaked.
“Disturbing the peace, that sort of thing. Go talk with him yourself.” Another constable, sweating and puffing, burst into the watch house stole away Loper’s attentions.
To the jail I went. Horace could protect himself for the rest of the day.
~
Frederick was crammed in the cell with six other men – violent revolutionaries, every one. He seemed mostly intact, except for the knee, where the fabric of his trousers ripped revealing a dirty and bloody mess. I whistled. We met at the bars, hands touching, faces warmed with each others’ breath. “Now tell me,” I asked, my voice a whisper. “What’s the worst that you did today?”
“I punched Constable Erdric in the nose. I think we had her over for dinner once.”
“And the knee?”
“An unfortunate run-in with the street.”
“You need it cleaned.”
“I know.”
A gap in our conversation, filled with quiet, non-incriminating background chatter.
He spoke, smoothing my fingers with his own. “You’re going to get me out of here, aren’t you?”
My first impulse was to refuse him. I didn’t voice this, but he was a smart man and probably knew it already. I had a duty to both my job, the city and the prime minister. That meant something to me in those days. Tossing them away so blithely felt akin to setting myself on fire after cladding myself in oily rags.
But... we were married. He followed me right into this damnable city, even after a flurry of letters and telegrams telling me how much he detested the idea. If my colleagues did their job – and I had no reason to believe that they wouldn’t, not in a great big blow-up such as this with at least two cities breathing down their necks and the reporters circling – they’d find out that his connection with Harkley went just a bit deeper than him being an enthusiastic audience member. Mine too, come to think of it.
I dipped my chin to my chest, following it up with a proper nod. “You’re bloody right, I am. I’m going to regret this and afterwards, you’re going to cook me a nice dinner and fetch me a pint and a pipe. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
The officer on duty was Floria Appleby. We were friends since the Gullenburgh days, she and I, and it was out of deference to that that she kept well back while I chitchatted with Frederick. I marched up to her with intent. “Floria,” said I. “You’ve got a choice here.”
Eyebrow raised, she asked, “And what’s that, then? If you want a conjugal visit...”
Well. Honestly, violence was the first plan, but why not take a better one when it presents itself? My muscles relaxed, relieved over not having to punch anyone myself today. “I really don’t know how long he’s going to be in here, do I?” Very annoying, isn’t it? Just over a silly, stupid assembly! Yes, I know he technically resisted arrest, but do you see how Erdric acts when she’s making an arrest? I know, shame! He’ll probably get off anyway, so where’s the harm? No point in making your life miserable too. And so on. The details of the conversation aren’t important in the slightest.
“No promises – don’t want the sarge catching wind of this, you understand – but I’ll see what I can do.” Floria winked, in a way she probably thought was suggestive. “Come talk to me tomorrow, why don’t you?” I tell you, being a loyal and trusted member of the Princess Aggies had its perks. Too bad I was rushing behind the metaphorical bushes to piss it away.
But there was little else to do at the jail, save calling Frederick a poor little bunny and patting him on his dear head, so I left.
Now to go find that bastard Harkley.
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